ad been taught housekeeping in the convent, and she regulated
their expenditure, which was very modest. Every day, Jean Valjean put
his arm through Cosette's and took her for a walk. He led her to the
Luxembourg, to the least frequented walk, and every Sunday he took her
to mass at Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, because that was a long way off.
As it was a very poor quarter, he bestowed alms largely there, and the
poor people surrounded him in church, which had drawn down upon him
Thenardier's epistle: "To the benevolent gentleman of the church of
Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas." He was fond of taking Cosette to visit the
poor and the sick. No stranger ever entered the house in the Rue Plumet.
Toussaint brought their provisions, and Jean Valjean went himself for
water to a fountain near by on the boulevard. Their wood and wine were
put into a half-subterranean hollow lined with rock-work which lay near
the Rue de Babylone and which had formerly served the chief-justice as
a grotto; for at the epoch of follies and "Little Houses" no love was
without a grotto.

In the door opening on the Rue de Babylone, there was a box destined for
the reception of letters and papers; only, as the three inhabitants of
the pavilion in the Rue Plumet received neither papers nor letters, the
entire usefulness of that box, formerly the go-between of a love
affair, and the confidant of a love-lorn lawyer, was now limited to
the tax-collector's notices, and the summons of the guard. For M.
Fauchelevent, independent gentleman, belonged to the national guard;
he had not been able to escape through the fine meshes of the census of
1831. The municipal information collected at that time had even reached
the convent of the Petit-Picpus, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud,
whence Jean Valjean had emerged in venerable guise, and, consequently,
worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the townhall.

Three or four times a year, Jean Valjean donned his uniform and mounted
guard; he did this willingly, however; it was a correct disguise which
mixed him with every one, and yet left him solitary. Jean Valjean had
just attained his sixtieth birthday, the age of legal exemption; but he
did not appear to be over fifty; moreover, he had no desire to escape
his sergeant-major nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he possessed
no civil status, he was concealing his name, he was concealing his
identity, so he concealed his age, he concealed everything; and, as we
have jus